Friday, December 01, 2006

"The Running of the Jew"

"But the seeds of anti-Semitic sentiment were planted in rural communities where no Jews existed, let alone Jewish usurers, by the Church, whether in cathechism or during the Easter services....At Las Illas...men and youths executed the Jews...by striking the stalls and church pavement with sticks. Elsewhere members of the congregation set up a din with rattles and heavy stamping, extinguishing candles (representing Jews), or burned Jews in effigy, in fires lit in the cemetery or (in Alsace) communal pyres. According to Charles Beauquier, in Franche-Comte at the end of the [19th] century the faithful went to Maundy Thursday service armed with a wooden mallet. 'At a certain passage of the service, the priest throws his book to the ground, and then everyone strikes repeated blows on the stalls and on the chairs. This is called tuer les Juifs.'"

--Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 39-40

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Honestly, having grown up my entire life as a half-Jewsih Catholic until the Passion of the Christ came out I never knew that Jews were supposedly responsible for Jesus' torture (it wasn't really death, since he rose again).
But just in case the Catholic church is currently anti-semetic I have become Episcopalian, making both my Jewish grandma and my Catholic grandma equally unhappy.